Page 16 of House of Hearts
Stuck in a beautiful limbo between life and death.
6
Joker Night blows in with a late-summer storm Saturday night.
Thunderheads sap the last of the heat, and a fierce wind slashes through all Birdie’s hard work. The hour and a half before was filled with primping, curling, spraying, teasing, back-combing, and a million eye-shadow swatches on my wrist. Now I feel like a drowned rat thanks to this torrential rain, but Amber’s more optimistic.
“I knew the waterproof setting spray was a good call. Your makeup still looks amazing,” she shouts over the storm. For as rich as she and Birdie are, we’re all still sharing one flimsy umbrella, our heels held in cheap plastic bags. “Is that narcissistic of me to say since I’m the one who did it? Oh well, who cares, it’s true. I did a great job.”
I shiver and rub the goose bumps on my arms. My dress is ill-equipped for the chill snaking through the air, but I’m sure the party will fix that.
“Does it even matter how I look if they’re handing out masks?” I ask.
Birdie presses in tighter to the left of Amber. Her hair is darkened by a mix of gel and rain. “The masks are the perfect accessory! Plus, even if we don’t get into the Cards and we have to rip off our masks and go home, at least we look good for some post-party selfies.”
Somehow I don’t see that as a great consolation prize. I brush Emoree’s pendant under my collar. The chain is slick and cold against my throat. “How does this work again?”
“We’ll have to find that one out together.” Birdie smirks. “We’ve never been before.”
All around us, the storm has made a mess of the school’s landscaping. The ground has become one big mudslide. Each step forward dredges us deeper, the way a stone drowns on its last skip.
Birdie’s teeth chatter, and she clutches the umbrella handle tighter. “All in favor of running the rest of the way there?”
“Yes, please.”
“Then let’s run, girls!”
I shouldn’t laugh at the way Amber squeals in the rain. I shouldn’t clutch Birdie’s hand and giggle as we dash out onto the lawn. There’s something electrifying in this moment, though. The ridiculous dress Amber gave me that feels like I’m playing dress-up, the pelt of cold rain spraying against my exposed skin, the roller-coaster flip in my stomach as we get closer.
“You know what they say about fairy tales?”Em’s singsong voice flutters through my thoughts. “Everything comes in threes.”
That might ring true tonight, but I know better than to believe in perfect storybook endings. Even the real fairy tales never ended in happily ever after. The Little Mermaid hacked off her tongue for the Sea Witch, and the prince didn’t want her in the end, so she turned to sea-foam. If anything, I’m not a fairy tale but a lesson for the Lockwells.
The House of Hearts is monstrous at night.
An awning separates us from the storm, and we take turnsshaking off the rain like a pack of wild dogs. Dozens of students mill around us, all of them in various states of disarray. Girls who’ve managed to make an immaculate red-carpet appearance and ones with mascara running down their cheeks. Guys shucking off their white button-ups and wringing rainwater out onto the ground.
“Thank God we’re mainly unscathed,” Birdie mutters as she checks her reflection in a compact.
I can’t even think about what I look like at the moment because I’m too busy staring at the world around me. Lamplight illuminates the windows above us, a wash of orange burning onto the shadowed lawn where we stand. There’s a frieze of martyred saints directly above our heads. Strange but fittingly morbid for the night. I make eye contact with an imp-faced gargoyle overhead, its mouth slashed in an eternal scream.
Birdie chuckles and jabs me with her elbow. “I was like that the first time I saw this place, too. Isn’t it something? I can’t wait to see the inside for the first time.”
Unfortunately, the first thing we see inside is a bold printed sign.
Play Your Card. Win a Mask.
The man holding the sign is silent behind a Venetian mask. Its face is split into an exaggerated smile with painted gold lips, and it has haunting mesh eyes. Even the cheeks are bloodied with a gory red heart on the left and a black diamond on the other.
“Sick mask, dude,” a freckled guy in the front of the line says. “Where’d you get it?”
I recognize the boy as one of the incoming freshmen who stood for the ceremony. According to Birdie and Amber, wasting your Joker card as a freshman is the worst possible move to make. In their words: “Why ruin the next four years for yourself if you don’t get in? You’ll forever be blacklisted from future Joker Nights and you’ll spend your whole Hartexperience knowing you wasted your shot. High risk, high reward.”
The jester says nothing in response, just taps the demand on the poster.
Freckles offers up his card with a fumbling hand and a sheepish wince.
The masked man examines it, holding the Joker to the light like a cashier examining a counterfeit bill. After a long moment of consideration, it’s finally deemed legitimate, and the boy is spared his misery and sent ahead to the table of masks. With a snap of nylon strings, he dons the moon-faced gaze of a barn owl, his freckles concealed by a faceful of snowy-white feathers.
